Aug 19

Trail Runner Has Encounter At The Catskill Mountains

A listener writes “Hey Wes, I had an encounter with what I’m pretty sure was a bigfoot on Hunter Mountain in the Catskills in May of 2018. Since the incident, I have desperately searched for answers which ultimately led me to your show. I can’t even put into words how thankful I am for you and your show and what it has done for me.

Im sure you’d rather hear about my encounter though so here it is. I am an avid endurance athlete competing in running and triathlon. At the time I was training for a 50 mile ultra marathon so as you can probably guess there was a lot of required training. The amount of volume an ultra athlete has to put in is terrible to say the least so it is very difficult to find anyone to train with, thus I spent over the course of 3 years, A LOT of time by myself in the woods. It was a Sunday night and I had the next day off from work so I had decided I would head down to the Catskills to get some mountain training in.

I’m from New York so it was about a 2.5 hour drive away. I arrived around 10am and as you can imagine at 10am on a Monday in May, there was only one other car in the parking lot. The first 2.25 miles had just over 2000 feet of ascent (I know this because I had recorded the run using strava that day). About 3/4 of the way up the climb there was guy maybe in his early to mid 20’s with his dog coming down the mountain. I ended up on the mountain for just over 5 hours all together that day and that was the only person I saw/heard all day long. Shortly after seeing him (I don’t know if it is just a coincidence or not) I started having this feeling that I’ve now heard over and over about on your show of what everyone else describes as “dread”. I’m not sure if that’s exactly how I would describe it but I guess I would have used, very uncomfortable. Something in my head kept repeating “you shouldn’t be here”. Also I noticed it became incredibly quiet, like nothing. I didn’t hear any birds, squirrels, chipmunks, nothing. That made me feel even more uncomfortable.

I reached the peak and just stood there for a few minutes listening and observing, still there were no sounds. Now I’ll admit, I’m not the worlds leading expert on wilderness but again, I had been training for these races for 3 years and had spent countless hours in the woods by myself. I had NEVER not heard any sounds. At minimu you could 100% always count on hearing chipmunks. Anyways, the trail connected at the top to another trail that ran perpendicular to the trail coming up. I took a right on the trail as I knew it would end up at a clearing with a firetower, that was the reason I picked this mountain. The clearing was not even another 1/4 mile away so I arrived fairly quickly and when I did I saw that there was a cabin there too. It was a cabin that the mountain volunteers would use on the weekends to greet tourists. I saw a big map on the outside wall of the cabin so I decided to stop and check it to make sure it matched up with the map I had on the AllTrails app on my phone. I stood there looking at it for maybe 30 seconds or so and out of nowhere, directly to my left I heard some very loud wood knocks. It was maybe 4 knocks and they sounded like there were just inside the treeline. My head shot over immediately because it startled me.

I think it was the volume, the sounded like they were right there, not off far in the distance. I then saw a sign on one of the trees that said “outhouse” so I assumed maybe it was a ranger or someone maybe fixing the outhouse. The knocks continued to happen, they were about 3 or 4 in a row and then there would be a pause of maybe 15-20 seconds before the next round. They were slow and rhythmic, nothing like the fast cadence of a woodpecker. I think I assumed the park ranger theory because it somewhat resembled someone nailing something into wood as if he was picking up a piece of wood and nailing to the outhouse, bending down to pick up another piece and repeating the process. I didn’t see or hear anything else though, no 4 wheeler, no little trailer with wood on it, no truck, no talking, no walkie talkie, nothing. Just the knocks. Everything combined had me still feeling very uncomfortable but it seemed like it could have been the ranger thing so I turned around to walk towards the firetower, I had wanted to climb up it and get some great photos. I got to the stairs and started up them. I got about half way up and truth be told, I’m scared of heights so I sissy’d out and turned back around. When I got back down I started walking towards the cabin again and when I got half way, “BANG BANG BANG” the knocks happened again and I don’t know what it was but this time it seemed to scare me the most. My gut was telling me that something was definitely not right.

They stopped me dead in my tracks and every ounce of energy and focus I had, had me staring at that treeline near the outhouse. The knocks ended and after about a 20 second or so pause all of a sudden something huge ran parallel to the tree line and down the mountain. It was just inside the treeline maybe 5-10 feet. It was roughly 6.5 feet tall, although after my experience and listening to everyone else’s on your show I don’t see how anyone in that type of shock can give an accurate height.

In any case if I had to guess, thats about the height I would say. It certainly wasn’t a 9-10 footer like you guys have out west but it was definitely bigger than me, which isn’t saying much at 5′ 8″. It was a brown color head to toe, not dark not light just straight up brown. The scariest part of the entire experience though, wes was its speed. I don’t even know how to put into words how fast this thing was. It really scared the $#@$ out of me. Because of how fast this thing was I couldn’t make out any specific details like hands, arms, feet, hair swing, eyes etc. but what I did see for certain was (about) the height, color and speed. Pair those with the feeling I had for roughly a half an hour in total before that and the consistencies with all of the encounters on your show and I’m fairly certain that’s what it was.

I ended up standing there completely paralyzed for I’m guessing another 30ish seconds and then I just completely snapped out of it and took off running down the trail. For some ridiculous reason, I ended up finishing my run that day and ran down the back side of the mountain ultimately to turn around and repeat the same trail system back to my car. I retrospect I think that was a terrible idea but then again in retrospect I think every decision I made that day was a terrible idea. I never did see or hear anything else that day but oddly I actually felt comfortable the rest of day, that feeling had just disappeared.”

5 Responses to “Trail Runner Has Encounter At The Catskill Mountains”

  1. Thomas W

    Makes a lot of sense to me…..Hunter is a ski area close to NYC but of course in May would be deserted but a great place to train on the trails. Forest all around Hunter…..yep “they” are in there.

  2. Erik B

    I listened to this episode and my hair stood on end! I hiked Hunter Mountain October of 21 on a weekday only saw 2 other hikers at the summit. On the way up I heard 1 unmistakable “Ohio Howl” across the Mountains SW side valley. Shortly after I heard a low pitched growl (maybe mountain lion?) but the two incidents within 5 minutes of each other was very odd. Nothing noted on rest of hike.

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